Re: Mansoor Hallaj - A Controversy unresolved
In following few posts, I’m posting some aspects from Mansoor’s life as given in the book Mystics & Sufis of Islam by Claud Field.
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Doctrine of Hallaj
**Mansur Hallaj (“the cotton-comber”), a Persian, of Zoroastrian lineage, was a pupil of Junaid of Bagdad, a more sober-minded Sufi than his contemporary Bayazid Bastami. Mansur himself however was of an enthusiastic temperament, and took no pains to guard his language.
One of his extraordinary utterances, “I am the truth - Anal Haq,” led at last to his execution, “the Truth - Al Haq” being one of the recognised names of God in Muhammadan nomenclature. Notwithstanding this, even at the present day he passes among the Sufis for one of their greatest saints, while the more orthodox regard him as a daring blasphemer who received his deserts.
“His contemporaries,” says a Muhammadan writer, “entertained as many different views concerning him as the Jews and Christians with respect to the Messiah.” Certainly when we read the various accounts of him by authors of different tendencies, if we did not know to the contrary, we might suppose ourselves reading about different persons bearing the same name. The orthodox regard him chiefly as a sorcerer in league with supernatural powers, whether celestial or infernal, for he caused, it is said, summer fruits to appear in winter and vice versa. He could reveal in open day what had been done in secret, knew everyone’s most private thoughts, and when he extended his empty hand in the air he drew it back full of coins bearing the inscription, “Say: God is One. - La Illaha Illallah”
Among the moderate Shiites, who had more than one point of contact with the Sufis, it is not a question of sorcery at all. For them the doctrine of Hallaj, which he had also practised himself, meant that by using abstinence, by refusing pleasure and by chastising the flesh, man can lift himself gradually to the height of the elect and even of angels. If he perseveres in this path he is gradually purged from everything human, he receives the spirit of God as Jesus did, and all that he does is done by God. 
**The Shiites say, moreover, that the reason for which Hallaj was put to death should be found not in his utterances but in the astonishing influence which he exercised over the highest classes of society, on princes and their courts, and which caused much disquietude to others, especially to the orthodox mullahs.
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